


and suddenly a light appears inside my brain

by amesbaloo



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-24
Updated: 2018-03-24
Packaged: 2019-04-07 06:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14075364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amesbaloo/pseuds/amesbaloo
Summary: "Neil hated soulmates. They were dangerous. Not only were they a potential attachment, something he could never allow himself, but they were a source of his father’s rage.""Andrew hated soulmates. He watched people around him flicker through emotions. Spending the days as rainbows, as pink love and peach contentment and green jealousy and purple pride flashed and glowed around them. His color never changed."-a soulmate au where you have an aura that shows your soulmate's emotions





	and suddenly a light appears inside my brain

**Author's Note:**

> So I pull the switch, the switch, the switch inside my head  
> And I see black, black, green, and brown, brown, brown and blue  
> Yellow violets, red  
> And suddenly a light appears inside my brain  
> And I think of my ways, I think of my days  
> And know that I have changed
> 
> main title and chapter titles from colours by grouplove

Neil hated soulmates. They were dangerous. Not only were they a potential attachment, something he could never allow himself, but they were a source of his father’s rage. At first he tried to figure out the pattern, to see if the rosy peach of contentment or the deep blue of sadness were what caused retaliation. He tried to think messages at his soulmate, desperate to tone down the colors and make it through a day unscathed. He knew it didn’t work that way and still he tried desperately to think away the colors.

He didn’t want to lose the colors though. Neither his mother nor father had an aura. A pure representation of what your soulmate was feeling, and how intensely they were feeling it. There were three potential reasons for someone to be without an aura. Either they were still young and their soulmate had yet to be born, they were one of the unfortunate few unsuited for a soulmate who never had the colors, or their soulmate had died and taken their aura with them. Neil didn’t know which was true for his parents, but he knew better than to ask. His father would greet the question with aggression and his mother with silence, so in the end it was best to remain curious. And honestly he didn’t really care.

Auras worked like a colored filter shifting the air around a person with a glowing light. They were beautiful. Emotions were not always beautiful, and it was hard for Neil to separate that. He knew enough to know that his soulmate did not have a good life. His colors had been solid for a few years in the middle, ranging through the positives with the occasional low moment. Then something changed. Even when there was a happy emotion there was always an underlying sense of unease, they colors muddied, like when you ran a yellow marker through black ink and couldn’t get it clean. Each day ended blackened, bloody red. The color was angry, and pained, and betrayed. And Neil hated whatever was causing it.

Then one day it shifted again. He was grey, always a numb, meaningless grey. Still, the occasional pure emotion would surge through the colors. The vibrant red of fury, or the too bright yellow of cruel amusement would light him up like a beacon.

It was dangerous, but Neil lived for the moments when a real emotion shone through. It was a reminder that whoever they were, this faceless soulmate was fighting the fog.

\---

Andrew hated soulmates. He watched people around him flicker through emotions. Spending the days as rainbows, as pink love and peach contentment and green jealousy and purple pride flashed and glowed around them. His color never changed. A pale, sickly green color, the color of fear, constantly surrounded him. It was the color green that cartoons claimed your face turned when you were violently ill. Every day of his life had been cast in the shadow of that color green. It made Andrew want to claw his skin off in the hope that there would be nothing left to cast out the color.

Some days a faint tinge of another color would grab the edges of the green. There was a time when Andrew would flood with hope, but he knew better than to feel anything of the sort now. No matter what he would stay green. Maybe angry red would tinge the edge, or a light, uncomfortable blue. But the green remained. 

There was only one day of difference. Andrew was half way across the campus to go to his statistics class when he came to a dead halt. A girl crashed into him, but he didn’t even acknowledge her, because the green was draining away and a new color was flooding in. It was the color of bereavement and loss- a dark navy. It lasted less than twenty-four hours. Andrew knew, he’d sat on the roof, chain-smoking and staring at his glow the same color as the night sky as the stars shone feebly above him. Until finally, his green slowly trickled in. It wasn’t quite the same though. It was weaker, as though it was no longer real fear. It was as though the boy had spent so long being afraid, that now on his own, and Andrew was quite sure he had lost his only companion, he was merely going through the emotions because no one taught him how to truly feel something other than fear.

Interesting.

\---

The exy stick dug into his stomach.

Too bright yellow dug into the grey.

\---

His exy stick slammed into the boy’s stomach.

Angry red slammed into the edges of his green.

\---

Neil didn’t know how it happened, but he started to trust the foxes. He knew that the upperclassmen were the kind of people who were from safer worlds than his own, but they had struggled enough to not turn away from him. Even the monsters who threatened to upend everything he was building did not set off the warning bells the way he thought they would.

Andrew was dangerous like a bear trap was dangerous. It could only hurt him if he forgot what it was capable of. And he was not in the habit of forgetting the rules of dangerous things.

\---

Andrew stared at his aura in the mirror. The green was as dark as it had ever been, pure concentrated fear. The green was as small as it had ever been. It was centralized, and a light, light peach that was just barely contentment was becoming his main color.

Andrew didn’t like it.

It felt too much like hope.

\---

Riko stepped out onto the stage and Neil’s chest seized. His aura all at once changed from grey to a bright, pulsating red. It was as though the anger was struggling to come forward.

\---

Andrew struggled against his teammates who kept him from the bastard on stage. His aura, which had been slowly reverting to its sickly green all day, lost all of its last remaining tinges of other emotion. He glowed the color of pure fear as he stared at the stage.

Neil tore into Riko, something that everyone else seemed to think Neil incapable of.

As Neil and Kevin shaking exited the stage, Andrew noticed something he would have thought his soulmate incapable of, his green, while still present, was being outshined by the brilliant orange of defiance. 

\---

Neil sat seated across from Riko and listened as Jean listed off his aliases. He tried to imagine what colors Riko would leave on a person, but there was no glow to his skin. It was one way Riko could not mar another person. Neil told him as much. 

His grey melded with an interested teal, with just barely there wisps of forest green worry.

\---

Neil couldn’t keep his mouth shut.

The idiot was going to bring down the wrath of the Ravens on Kevin. The idiot was going to bring down the wrath of the Ravens on himself.

Andrew very pointedly ignored the return of the orange.


End file.
